In second term, Obama will allow UN to tax Americans

Oct. 7, 2012: President Barack Obama speaks at a campaign event at the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles. (AP)

It should come as no surprise that President Obama will raise taxes if he is re-elected. But here’s the shocker: He will invite the United Nations to tax Americans directly. And the proceeds would go directly to the Third World. In this way, Barack Obama will, indeed, realize the dreams of his father.

In our new book, “Here Come the Black Helicopters: UN Global Governance and the Loss of Freedom,” Eileen and I describe how there is now pending in the U.N. all kinds of plans to tax Americans and redistribute their wealth – not to other Americans – but to other countries. These taxes will not be like our U.N. dues paid by a vote of our Congress. Nor akin to foreign aid which we choose to give. They would be mandatory levies imposed by treaty on American citizens. And, since they would be enumerated in a Treaty – not an act of Congress — only the president and the Democratic Senate need be on board. The Republican House has no role in the Treaty-making process.

(Of course, we do not believe that actual black UN helicopters will land in our midst to take over our country. But we use the symbolism to warn that the liberal, bureaucratic elites in the UN, enabled by Obama and Hillary, mean to create global governance to override American self-rule and independence).

Here is what we say in “Black Helicopters” that Obama, Hillary, and the UN are planning for us:

A “Robin Hood” tax on financial transactions. Every time you buy or sell a stock or a bond or exchange money while travelling, you’d be hit with a financial transactions tax (a percentage of your transaction) that would go to the UN.

A global tobacco tax with the funds to flow to the World Health Organization (WHO).

A UN-imposed tax on billionaires all over the world. And don’t delude yourself for a moment that it is only the 1600 current billionaires who will be hit. Once the precedent of a UN tax on US citizens is approved, it will gradually grow downwards to cover more and more Americans. Again the funds will go to the UN.

Under the Law of the Sea Treaty – up for Senate ratification in December of the lame duck session – offshore oil and gas wells would have to pay a proportion of their revenues to the International Seabed Authority, a UN-sponsored organization, which would distribute the loot to the third world.

A carbon tax on all U.S. or other foreign commercial or passenger aircraft flying to Europe. Nominally to fight climate change, these revenues would also go to the third world.

A mandatory assessment to be imposed on the U.S. to compensate third world nations for the costs of reducing their carbon output.

These taxes are, of course, only the first steps. Once the principle is established of UN taxation of American citizens, the sky is the limit. (more…)

Breaucracy rules the waves

U.N. treaty would grant naval rights U.S. already exercises

By Admiral. James A. Lyons

Retired Adm. James A. Lyons was commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and senior U.S. military representative to the United Nations.

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE: In summary, it should be clear that the United States does not need membership in the Law of the Sea Treaty in order to protect its navigational, security and economic interests. A seat on the International Seabed Authority would give us one vote out of 41 with no veto authority and no right of appeal. There is nothing to be gained by subjecting the freedoms of navigation we enjoy today, plus infringement of our sovereignty and mineral royalties, to what is essentially an unaccountable U.N. bureaucracy. Our best course of action to protect our national interests is to remain the pre-eminent naval power in the world

On June 14, Sen. John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, held hearings to support the Obama administration’s goal to make the United States a signatory to what is clearly a controversial and flawed United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

The fact that we as the premier maritime power in the world would submit our freedom of navigation rights as well as issues dealing with our sovereignty to a U.N. bureaucratic International Seabed Authority based in Jamaica should raise serious concern. The argument made that we must have a “seat at the table” to secure the U.S. Navy’s freedom of navigation and other transit rights, including the right of innocent passage, is nonsense.

Furthermore, UNCLOS has provisions that could seriously interfere with legitimate naval operations by allowing other nations to avail themselves of the treaty’s mandatory dispute-resolution mechanisms. These could be used to interfere with training exercises and other operations, such as hydrographics or intelligence. Such interference could adversely impact our anti-submarine warfare operations, with serious consequences. (more…)

Why the U.N. Shouldn’t Own the Seas

The Law of the Sea Treaty is as harmful today as it was when Reagan and Thatcher first opposed it in 1982.

Thirty years ago, President Ronald Reagan asked me to meet with world leaders to represent the United States in opposition to the United Nations Law of the Sea Treaty. Our efforts soon found a persuasive supporter in British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Today, as the U.S. Senate again considers approving this flawed agreement, the Reagan-Thatcher reasons for opposition remain every bit as persuasive.

When I met with Mrs. Thatcher in 1982, her conclusion on the treaty was unforgettable: “What this treaty proposes is nothing less than the international nationalization of roughly two-thirds of the Earth’s surface.” Then, referring to her battles dismantling Britain’s state-owned mining and utility companies, she added, “And you know how I feel about nationalization. Tell Ronnie I’m with him.”

Reagan had entered office the year before with the treaty presented to him as a done deal requiring only his signature and Senate ratification. Then as now, most of the world’s nations had already approved it. The Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations had all gone along. American diplomats generally supported the treaty and were shocked when Reagan changed America’s policy. Puzzled by their reaction, the president was said to have responded, “But isn’t that what the election was all about?”

Yet, as the Gipper might have said, here we go again: An impressive coalition—including every living former secretary of State—has endorsed the Obama administration’s goal of ratifying the treaty. The U.S. Navy wants to “lock in” existing and widely accepted rules of high-seas navigation. Business groups say the treaty could help them by creating somewhat more certainty.

Can so many people, organizations and countries be mistaken? Yes. Various proponents have valid considerations, but none has made a compelling case that the treaty would, on balance, benefit America as a whole.

Though a 1994 agreement (signed by some but not all parties to the treaty) fixed some of its original flaws, the treaty remains a sweeping power grab that could prove to be the largest mechanism for the world-wide redistribution of wealth in human history.

The treaty proposes to create a new global governance institution that would regulate American citizens and businesses without being accountable politically to the American people. Some treaty proponents pay little attention to constitutional concerns about democratic legislative processes and principles of self-government, but I believe the American people take seriously such threats to the foundations of our nation.

The treaty creates a United Nations-style body called the “International Seabed Authority.” “The Authority,” as U.N. bureaucrats call it in Orwellian shorthand, would be involved in all commercial activity in international waters, such as mining and oil and gas production. Pursuant to the treaty’s Article 82, the U.S. would be required to transfer to this entity a significant share of all royalties generated by U.S. companies—royalties that would otherwise go to the U.S. Treasury.

Over time, hundreds of billions of dollars could flow through the Authority with little oversight. The U.S. would not control how those revenues are spent: The treaty empowers the Authority to redistribute these so-called international royalties to developing and landlocked nations with no role in exploring or extracting those resources. (more…)

Obama’s Land of the LOST

By Michelle Malkin

5/25/2012

What’s green and blue and grabby all over? President Obama’s new pressure campaign for Congress to ratify the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST).

The fight over LOST goes back three decades, when it was first rejected by President Ronald Reagan. He warned that “no national interest of the United States could justify handing sovereign control of two-thirds of the Earth’s surface over to the Third World.” According to top Reagan officials William Clark and Ed Meese, their boss believed the “central, and abiding, defect” was “its effort to promote global government at the expense of sovereign nation states — and most especially the United States.”

The persistent transnationalists who drafted LOST favor creation of a massive United Nations bureaucracy that would draw ocean boundaries, impose environmental regulations and restrict business on the high seas. They’ve tinkered with the document obsessively since the late ’60s, enlisted Presidents Clinton and Bush, and recruited soon-to-depart GOP Sen. Dick Lugar to their crusade. Ignore the mushy save-the-planet rhetoric. Here’s the bottom line: Crucial national security decisions about our naval and drilling operations would be subject to the vote of 162 other signatories, including Cuba, China and Russia. (more…)

Back in 1982, President Ronald Reagan decided not to sign a treaty known as “Law of the Sea” (LOST), a United Nations convention that would raid America’s treasury for billions of dollars, then redistribute that wealth to the rest of the world by an international bureaucracy headquartered in Kingston, Jamaica. But today, the Obama Administration has revived that treaty, and tomorrow Senator John Kerry (D-MA) will hold hearings designed to illustrate its supposed benefits and generate support for its ratification. Without a doubt, Reagan’s decision should stand, and LOST should remain relegated to the trash bin of history.

The rationale for LOST is that it supposedly brings order to the world’s oceans, defines the rights and responsibilities of nations as they navigate and conduct business across the seas, protects the marine environment, and allows for the development of natural resources of the deep seabed. On the surface, these all sound like worthwhile goals. The thing is, the United States doesn’t need to join another United Nations treaty to make it happen.

For more than 200 years before LOST was adopted in 1982 and for 30 years since then, the U.S. Navy has successfully protected America’s maritime interests regardless of the fact that the United States has not signed on to the treaty. The United States’ navigational rights and freedoms have been secure, and they are best guaranteed by a strong Navy.

LOST is not without consequences, either. One of the more nefarious and insidious of its provisions is Article 82, which requires the United States to forfeit royalties generated from oil and gas development on the continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles – an area known as the “extended continental shelf.” That money, which one estimate says could be worth many billions, if not trillions of dollars, would go to the International Seabed Authority, a new international bureaucracy created by the treaty and based in Jamaica. Heritage’s Steven Groves explains[1] that from there, America’s money could be shipped to the Middle East, Africa, China, and even state sponsors of terror:

LOST directs that the revenue be distributed to “developing States” (such as Somalia, Burma … you get the picture) and “peoples who have not attained full independence” (such as the Palestinian Liberation Organization … hey, don’t they sponsor terrorism?). The assembly – the “supreme organ” of the International Seabed Authority in which the United States has a single vote to cast – has the final say regarding the distribution of America’s transmogrified “international” royalties. (more…)

Sea-Treaty Vote Put Off Till After U.S.

Election

EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE: Opponents, including the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, have suggested that joining the treaty would cede too much control of the seas to the United Nations and other international bodies. …..Other Republicans said they suspected the treaty would impinge on American sovereignty, for instance, by forcing the U.S. to agree to international emissions controls to comply with treaty provisions on pollution over the oceans.

WASHINGTON—A key Senate Democratic leader said he won’t push for a vote on the politically divisive Law of the Sea treaty before the presidential election in November, but will seek to line up support for ratification in the coming months.

Sen. John Kerry (D., Mass.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, opened a series of hearings on Wednesday, inviting Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to argue for ratification of the long-stalled pact.

Agence France-Presse / Getty ImagesA Philippine soldier in Masinloc, 140 miles from the disputed Scarborough Shoal area in the South China Sea.

Mr. Kerry said he hoped to avoid ensnaring the treaty, which is opposed by some conservatives, in the presidential election campaign.

“I do not want this treaty to become victim to that race or the politics of the moment,” Sen. Kerry said. “We will wait until the passions of the election have subsided before we vote.”

Obama administration officials want ratification this year, but said a vote could be held in the lame-duck period following the election.

The treaty sets international navigation rules, which U.S. Navy officials consider important and which business groups argue are critical for exercising rights to mine the ocean floor or explore for oil in the Arctic. (more…)